


the other side of salvation

by wildwildmercury



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27411019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildwildmercury/pseuds/wildwildmercury
Summary: “Witcher,” Avallac’h cautioned. “She will die if she exhausts her life force. As you well know.”He walked up to his sorceress, glowing in a dangerous aura of destabilized energy and magic and desperation and grief, and gently took her wrist. “Yen. Stop.”She had looked at him with such a bright and palpable pain that it took his breath away, and he knew even then that it was the end for them both.*Set directly after the game’s bad ending. Geralt and Yennefer deal - or not deal, as it is - with the loss of their daughter.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	the other side of salvation

**Author's Note:**

> title from Mary Oliver's In Blackwater Woods.

The drowners could sense the smell of death in the hut, and came in droves. 

Like maggots drawn to the stench of rotting flesh, they converged on the hut’s broken windows and doors, careful at first, mindful of the figure hunched in the middle of the room. They knew his kind, knew the bite of silver from the sword that lay discarded at his side. But one drowner crawled cautiously into the threshold, then two, a third breaking through the window, and still the figure did not move.

A breath. And then they attacked in unison. Ear piercing screeches coming from the pack as they lunged towards the man that emanated that sickly sweet scent, one they knew well and relished in the miserable men in the swamps of Velen. 

_ Despair.  _

One slashed the man’s arm, yowling as it met the steel of his armor. Another, emboldened by the stillness of the figure, leapt to dig its claws in his unprotected thigh. The iron smell of blood permeated the air as the pack attacked.

Just as one was about to sink its teeth into the man’s neck, there was a disturbance in the air and a rip in space opened. 

“Gods - Geralt!” 

A figure in black and white, muttering a spell, called on a blast of violet light that scattered the drowners. They screamed in agony and recoiled. 

She grunted as she dragged the figure, still unmoving, into the swirling blackness of the portal. The drowners, furious at the attack, leapt to slash at both figures, but in a blink of an eye, the pulsing black hole folded into itself and was gone. 

* * *

This is a dream he has every night. 

He is bracing himself against the swirling wind, each step sinking deeper and deeper into snow. The landscape is white and desolate - there is nothing here but the cold, nothing with a spark of life that can survive. 

He sees nothingness one moment, only a hailstorm of ice, and in the next - 

“Ciri!”

His shout is lost in the deafening roar of the wind.

His daughter is sitting in the middle of an icy lake, unbothered by the elements, her back to him. The storm grows stronger the closer he gets, until he half drags himself to reach her, shouting her name with every step. She does not answer. 

He tries to grab her shoulder, but finds that his hand passes right through her. He is not really here. He moves in front of her to look at her face, and sees what he could not see from behind. Her face frozen in a mask of fear, her emerald eyes open and glazed in death, her hand clutching her sword. Alone, unreachable on this plane for eternity. 

* * *

Geralt gasped awake, hand stretched out and grabbing at air. He breathed heavily, clutching the sheets to ground himself. He could still feel the frost on his face, the vice grip on his heart. 

After a few minutes, he looked around, witcher senses studying his surroundings by habit. 

A small, familiar room. A hut, to be exact. Dried herbs dangling in the ceiling. Potions on shelves, books haphazardly scattered all over the floor. And a sweet and tart scent he would know to the ends of the earth lingering in the air.

“You’re awake,” Yennefer said evenly from the doorway. She was dressed in all black, in a long-sleeved silk blouse laced up to her neck and leather trousers that hugged her lithe figure. Her raven curls were pinned up. Nothing about her looked soft, only dangerous and untouchable and, as ever, beautiful.

Geralt looked away from her, his hand rubbing his face. He blinked at the feel of rough bandages catching on his skin, and only then realized that he was covered in them from his chest to his legs. It was good, clean work. He felt a warm poultice on his wounds, felt the lingering, soothing effects of magic. 

And felt a sudden, searing stab of anger. 

He said nothing, casting his gaze on the roughspun sheets tangled in his legs. 

“If you’d rather I left you for drowner grub, I wish you’d said so. You bled all over a rather expensive dress and ruined it.” Yen had not moved from the threshold. Her face was a mask of indifference, her voice cool.

“Stay out of my head, Yen,” Geralt snapped. “How did you even find me?”

“The last crone’s death sent out an intense wave of magic large enough, I imagine, to be felt by every sorcerer in the continent. I tracked the source, followed the scent of miserable gloom and doom, and there you were.” 

Geralt glared, amber eyes meeting amethyst. “I never asked you to save me.” 

She said nothing, only held his gaze with an intense violet stare. He looked away first, closing his eyes again. 

“True,” she said finally. “A lesson for the future, I suppose. I shall leave you, then.” She turned around. 

Perhaps in another life, one as recent and unfamiliar to him as the one he had only a week ago, he might have stopped her, might have felt a longing to keep her near him. But having her near him now was unbearable, and he felt almost relieved that she was walking away. He thought he might have heard a catch in her breath. 

Suddenly, he sat up straight. “Where is it? Where’s - ” 

“In the drawer, next to the bed.”

He reached over and pulled the drawer open roughly, feeling a particularly nasty wound reopen on his right side. He ignored it, rummaging through the drawer until his hands closed over the medallion. He clutched it and held it close, feeling the cold ridges of the metal dig into his palm. 

He looked up and saw that she had turned her head to the side to stare inscrutably at him. Yen always had the capacity to lay you bare with her gaze, each secret and lie turned up and held for her inspection. 

A beat, then he asked, “Why are we in Keira Metz’s hut?” 

“I didn’t know you were so well-acquainted with it,” Yennefer said dryly. “I know now that you’ve been knee-deep in the swamps for the past week, drowning in self pity and wrestling with drowners and crones, so I’m not surprised you’ve not heard the news.” 

He didn’t respond to her goading.

“Emhyr is dead. Radovid has all but taken over Novigrad and the Eternal Flame has spread as far as Aedirn and Lyria.” 

Geralt blinked. He didn’t expect that. “Damn. Vengerberg?”

“By the time I left, they were setting fires to every herbalist’s and two-bit fortuneteller’s homes. My shop is no more.” Her voice was cool and clear, but three decades of knowing and loving her, and he could sense the hurt and anger all the more for how carefully they were hidden. 

“I’m sorry, Yen,” he said earnestly. He knew her well enough that it wasn’t about her shop at all, but the destruction of another sanctuary. Another home she built, set in flames by careless hands. 

Yennefer hummed noncommittedly. “Save me your platitudes, witcher. As it’s your wish to be left alone, I shall grant it. I will leave in the morning.”

Geralt bristled. “You know damn well I never said that. Stay.” 

She was silent for a moment. “All the same,” she said so quietly he could only just hear her. “I cannot bear to be around you like this, either.” 

* * *

He fell asleep not long after, tired from his wounds and drained suddenly from his encounter with Yennefer. He dreamt of days long gone, of Ciri as a child snuggling between them one morning in an inn they stayed at on the way to Thanedd. 

“I am feeling indisposed!” Ciri had declared, burying her face in Yen’s neck and wrapping all her limbs around her mother like a monkey.

Geralt snorted. Yen raised an eyebrow at him over Ciri’s head. Geralt shrugged.

Yen, gently smoothing out tangled ashen hair, said, “And what solution do you propose for your indisposition, my ugly one?” 

Ciri emerged from Yen’s curls long enough to look both of them in the face. “I propose,” Ciri said seriously, “that we all stay in this bed for three days, and let Dandelion bear our apologies to the mages.” 

Geralt smirked, eyes smoldering at Yennefer. “I wouldn’t mind staying in bed with you for three days.”

Yen rolled her eyes and hid a smile in Ciri’s hair.

“I don’t quite know how, but I think you’re both disgusting,” declared Ciri. 

Geralt woke, gasping, his hand clutching his chest, the memory as searing as any nightmare. 

* * *

When the light had gone out of the portal in the elven tower, Geralt knew. He had stood there, sword limp at his side, even as Yennefer had rounded on Avallac’h and demanded an explanation. 

“It - It seems that the challenge to the White Frost was met and concluded,” said the elf, his normally placid expression morphed into shock and surprise. 

“What the fuck does that mean, elf?” Yennefer thundered, her fists clenched. He could smell her growing desperation and fear, her control failing her for once. “Speak plainly.” 

Avallac’h looked at the lifeless portal, then at both of them. He looked pained. “Zireael is - ” 

“Stop,” Geralt said. “Don’t.” 

“You don’t know that,” Yennefer had snarled. She called out in Elvish, summoning a blinding yellow light that flared over the portal, and died, and flared again. Over and over, he watched her do it, sensing the escalating Chaos around her crackle and build in intensity as his medallion vibrated around his neck. 

“Witcher,” Avallac’h cautioned. “She will die if she exhausts her life force. As you well know.” 

He walked up to his sorceress, glowing in a dangerous aura of destabilized energy and magic and desperation and grief, and gently took her wrist. “Yen. Stop.”

She had looked at him with such a bright and palpable pain that it took his breath away, and he knew even then that it was the end for them both. 

She had portalled them to Vengerberg with the last of her energy, and he spent the night with her wrapped in his arms. She was blazing hot, fevered from depletion, clutching at his shirt and crying out deliriously for her daughter. 

And he had never felt so cold. His body felt like a corpse, and she burned him with her soft warmth. In the morning, when she had settled and the fever had gone down, he untangled himself from her and left before she woke. 

  
  


* * *

After that, he had gone back to his Path, taking every contract, slaughtering every creature with relish. 

My daughter is dead, he learned to say. It was ironic how he had felt almost afraid to call Ciri his daughter when she was alive, thinking it was enough that she knew. They both knew. And now that she was gone, he realized it was true that there was power in names. 

He lost himself in Velen with little rest or purpose, until he came upon the village of Downwarren and realized that there was something he needed to do. He focused all of his rage and energy on killing the crone and taking back Ciri’s medallion. He knew well enough that it wouldn’t take the pain of losing her away, but the moment he grasped the silver wolf head in his hands for the first time, he felt his triumph blacken into a debilitating despair that engulfed and paralyzed him. 

Years of loving and protecting her, and there wasn’t even a body to bury, only a hunk of sharp cold metal in his hands.

He sighed, staring up at the ceiling of the hut. The morning rays filtered in through the small windows, bathing everything in a rosy golden hue. He inhaled deeply. Yennefer’s scent still lingered in the air. She was not inside, but he could feel her nearby. 

Then - footsteps nearing the hut. A clink of armor, the metallic tang of steel swords. And something else. He sniffed, then cursed after placing the familiar scent of ozone and rust that was dimeritium. 

He grabbed his silver sword from its place beside his bed - the steel was still embedded in the crone’s body, where he hoped it would stay until it rotted - and ripped open the door just as the witch hunters approached.

There were a good dozen of them, all armed to the teeth. He felt the familiar call in his bones, the one that recognized the inevitability of a fight. And a raw part of him craved the idea of violence, wanted to feel the ringing of silver and steel and the satisfaction of sinking blade into flesh and bone. 

Their leader, a tall hulking man, stepped forward. His armor was bloodied and on his waist was a pair of heavy dimeritium shackles. “Where is the sorceress bitch that lives here?”

“The blonde witch? Long gone,” Geralt replied. “Guessing you need a cure for warts.” 

The leader spat at his feet. “Might be that you need a quick lesson on respect.”

For a moment, Geralt considered casting Axii to quell the fight. But only for a moment. 

“‘Oy, Gordo, is that who I think it is? It must be! That there’s Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf!” 

The leader, Gordo, whipped his head back to appraise Geralt with a glint in his eye. “The White Wolf, eh? A witcher,” He spat on the ground. “A witcher who fucks a sorceress with violet eyes and raven hair. I remember the ballads. Where’s that bitch Yennefer of - ”

The deep slash to the man’s throat was quick and unexpected, and had the desired result of him crumpling to the ground, gurgling and choking on his own blood. 

  
  


* * *

_ “I thought I’d find you here.” _

_ Ciri looked up at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears. She scoffed. “I don’t want to hear it, Geralt.” _

_ Geralt held his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”  _

_ He settled beside her in her place under the large oak tree. The lake stretched out before them, placid and streaked in orange by the sunset. It had always been her favorite place in Kaer Morhen. He leaned back, feeling Ciri’s warmth beside him. _

_ A few minutes passed in silence. _

_ “Do you remember when Vesemir made me that - well, dress seems like a generous description for it now,” Ciri said with the ghost of a small smile.  _

_ Geralt smirked softly and nodded.  _

_ “He spent two days trying to figure out how to hack and sew all your leathers to form some sort of clothing-adjacent shape,” she said with a watery laugh. “Two hundred years slaying monsters, felled by a little girl’s outfit.”  _

_ Geralt opened up his right arm invitingly. Without hesitation, Ciri burrowed in his chest.  _

_ “This fight against the Wild Hunt has taken so much,” she said quietly. “So many people sacrificed so much.” She shook her ashen head. “Too much. For me. I don’t want to lose you and Yennefer - you are my only family left in this world. And I am afraid of what will happen if I fail to take them down.” _

_ “You won’t,” Geralt said firmly, tightening his grip on her. “And it’s ‘we’. We’ll take them down.” _

_ “There’s no way you could know that,” she replied almost matter-of-factly. A tone, he thought bemusedly, copied straight from her mother.  _

_ “You’re right, I don’t know,” he agreed.  _

_ After a few moments of expectant silence, she frowned up at him. “You are complete rubbish at this.”  _

_ Geralt chuckled and kissed her forehead. “I am but a simple witcher, remember? I only know two things.” He looked solemnly at her emerald eyes, which had started to mist again. “I know that I have faith in you. And I know that I would die before I let anything happen to you.” _

_ She looked up at him with an unreadable expression before hiding her face back in his chest.  _

She had said nothing. These days, he looked back at that memory as a premonition. A warning he had failed to see.

* * *

His body both ached and hummed with life. He made his way through the portal and into the elven ruins Keira Metz had once used for bathing. 

Yennefer was settled on one of the wider rocks at the base of the structure. There was a thick blanket spread beneath her, a goblet of wine forgotten at her side. She had her face tilted towards the sunlight and her inky curls blew gently around her face with the breeze. A book lay open on her lap, but her gaze was far away and she absently caressed something in her hands. At the sound of his footsteps, she turned to him and gasped. 

He knew how he must look. He was covered in blood, his wounds newly opened. 

“It’s not mine,” he said gruffly in response to the growing anger in her eyes. He knew her too well to know that it was only a cover for her fear. He could hear the escalating pounding of her pulse.

When she reached him, she ran her hands all over his bare chest and shoulders, and immediately he felt a warm tingling at the feel of her soft fingers running all over his skin that he knew wasn’t only from her magic. 

“What happened?” She demanded. 

“Witch hunters. Looking for Keira. And now, you.” 

“Why is it, do you think, that you always feel the need to resort to gruesome violence?” She asked. Her violet eyes were hooded as she worked. 

“You have to leave,” he said, wincing in pain as a long gash on his side stitched itself together. “There will be more of them soon. Did you hear me? Yen - ”

Suddenly, he grabbed her right wrist. She stilled completely. He didn’t let go, only turned her wrist up slowly. The chain wrapped around it moved with the motion. 

“Geralt,” she said carefully. “I merely borrowed it.” 

“Give it back,” he growled. 

_ No body to bury. Only a hunk of sharp cold metal. _

She stepped away from him, and pulled her wrist free from his grip. 

“Yennefer - “

In the next moment, he felt the medallion’s weight on his chest, its chain appearing around his neck as it vibrated with its twin wolf. 

“As I said, I meant to return it.” She turned away, her hair shielding her face. “I have no trinket of hers to brood over for myself.” Her tone was a sharp double-edged sword, cutting both him and herself.

He fought to keep his breathing even. He felt her presence in his mind and brought mental gates crashing down, keeping her out. He felt so very raw. These days he swung from a cold, all-consuming despair to the most violent of rages, and her presence threw him off, as always. He both wanted to hold her close to him, and wanted her gone.

“I thought I told you to stay out of my head,” Geralt ground out. “And you should’ve asked before taking it.” 

He already knew it was the wrong thing to say. 

She rounded on him, violet eyes flaring. Her hands were trembling, and she clenched them into fists. “Why do you act as if only you have lost her?” She lashed out. “You do not have a monopoly on grief, Geralt!” 

“Let’s not do this right now,” he warned. “There are witch hunters - “ 

“And when is the right time, Geralt?” She interrupted sharply. “When I find your broken body gnawed on by fucking nekkers? Torn apart by sirens in Skellige? Frozen on the side of the pass in Kaer Morhen?”

“Yen - “

“Which suicide mission will you endeavor next?” She was almost shouting now, her clear, angry voice ringing in the garden. 

Frustrated, he sliced his hand through the air. “What do you want from me, Yen? What do you want me to say?” 

“I want you not to die,” she snapped. “And I want you to stop acting as if only you have lost a child!” Her eyes burned with hurt, her slim shoulders tense and raised. 

For a moment, they seemed at an impasse. Then all at once, she seemed to deflate, her rage leaving her in the next breath. She shivered and seemed to fold into herself, her arms wrapping around her middle.

There was a heavy silence between them, broken only by the soft sound of a nearby fountain.

“I thought you were dead when I found you,” she said softly. “I am barely surviving the loss of our daughter, Geralt. I don’t know how I can survive the loss of you.” 

There were two parts of him at war in himself - a part unable to stand seeing her in so much pain, that wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her. And yet another part that couldn’t bear any more of this interminable grief - both hers and his - and it was that part that kept his arms at his sides, that saw the few feet between them as a gaping chasm worth leagues. Galaxies.

Yen continued, “You think that you don’t deserve comfort or love because she’s gone. You’re so afraid of your pain, and you’re afraid of mine too. It’s funny,” she let out a sound that was too sharp and sad to be a laugh, “you would slaughter an army of witch hunters to protect me, but you can’t even bear to be in the same room with me.

“I know you are hurt and in pain, and the best way you deal with it - the only way you know how, is to drive everyone away. But I am suffering too, Geralt. She was my daughter, too. She was your Child of Destiny, but she was my child.” Her voice wavered. “My daughter. My Ciri.” Her tears spilled silently down her pale face and she made no move to brush them away. “You were my first love, but she was my last.”

She closed the distance between them, lifting her hands to cradle his face. This close to her, he saw everything - the deep shadows under her amethyst eyes, the new gauntness in her cheeks, the glimmer of tears on her smooth skin - and, by habit, he breathed in her intoxicating scent.

Her brow furrowed softly, and she caressed his cheek absentmindedly with her thumb. “There is something broken now between us, and I - I don’t think you want to fix it.”

His throat was raw, and his arms felt like stiff lead weights at his side. 

“You said so yourself back in the beginning,” he said at last. “Destiny is not enough. Something more is needed. And now the djinn’s wish is gone. And she’s dead.” 

It was as if all the air had left the garden. He watched her beautiful face crumple, heard her pained intake of breath. Slowly, as if he was a poisonous snake, she released his face and turned away from him, restoring the space between them.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. The blow he aimed was true. Yen knew how to wield her words like the sharpest of weapons, knew precisely where they would hurt the most. And he had learned from the best. 

He felt more than saw the complete shift in her. With his witcher senses, he heard her slow exhale, the rustle of her dress that meant she had smoothed it down. 

“Well,” her voice was soft and deadly as ice. He had felt cold for some time now, felt like he couldn’t possibly feel any more grief, but all the same her tone broke through what he thought was deadened skin to lodge into his heart. “I won’t stay where I’m not wanted. As your wishes are clear, I shall leave.” 

He opened his eyes. 

Without looking back at him, she walked a few steps away and raised her arms. When she brought them down heavily on her side, a portal yawned open in front of her. For a moment, she only stood in front of the whirling maelstrom. 

His heart began to pound in his ears. Suddenly he knew. If she stepped into that portal - if he let her - he wouldn’t see her again. Not in a long while. Perhaps not ever. 

She looked back, not quite meeting his eyes. “Goodbye, witcher.” 

His feet were rooted to the ground. His body a study in stone. She stepped into the portal. It pulsed, deafening in the silence of the garden, and then closed behind her.

He fell on his knees, clutching the medallion close to his chest, his head bowed.


End file.
